This article first appeared in the series H. P. Blavatsky: The Mystery in The Theosophical Path in 1930.
Karma is a Sanskrit word, and as a word means Action. But when used in a philosophical sense, it has a technical meaning best translated into English by the word 'consequence.' The idea is that every movement of a living entity, be that movement spiritual, mental, psychological, physical, or other, is immediately or at a later date succeeded by a consequence or an effect closely akin to that movement, of which the movement is the cause; and that this consequence or effectual action is an inevitable result of the causative action which preceded it and gave it birth. Also that this linking together of action to action, and of cause to effect, or of consequence to its precedent movement, is a universal rule, and applies not only to man or to any other animate entity on earth, but to the Universe both in general and in particular.
It is not, by any means, what is known in the Occident as Fatalism, for the karmic results or consequences flow forth only as effects from some one entity which originated them or gave them birth; and upon that entity these causal movements recoil sooner or later, as effects or consequences. Fatalism, on the other hand, means the doctrine or belief of a rather restricted class of minds, that the Universe is governed by some transcendent personal or individualized power which impresses upon such Universe all precedent causes, and therefore all consequent effects, and that it is hopeless for the entities or beings or things composing such a supposititious Universe to try to escape from the over-ruling and over-powering energy or energies thus manifested.
Karma, therefore, is essentially, in the last analysis, a doctrine of Free Will, for naturally the entity which initiates a movement or action: spiritual, mental, psychological, or physical or other: is responsible thereafter in the shape of consequences and effects, that flow therefrom, and sooner or later recoil upon the actor or mover.
Of course it is true to a certain extent -- since everything is interlocked and interlinked and interblended with everything else, and that nothing and no being can live unto itself alone -- that other entities are of necessity, in smaller or larger degree, affected by the causes or motions initiated by any individual entity. But such effects or consequences on entities other than the prime mover, are only indirectly a morally compelling power, in the true sense of the word 'moral.'
An example of how one entity can affect another in the manner just spoken of, is given in what is meant by 'family karma' as contrasted with one's own individual karma: that is to say, the network or web of circumstances and events which belong to the family of which he is a part. Or, again, national karma, the series of consequences pertaining to the nation of which he is an individual; or again, the racial karma pertaining to the race of which the individual is an integral member.
The reason for this secondary series of consequences is not different, however, when we go to the roots of things, from action initiated by the individual entity himself, because the doctrine of Karma also sets forth that the family or the nation or the race to which such individual entity belongs, is so on account of the karmic consequences or effects originally initiated by that individual which brought him into that milieu or set of circumstances. He himself builded for himself, in some past time, incarnation in that family or in that nation or race. So, in a very real sense, the family or national or racial karma in which he finds himself involved, he is in his own particular minor degree himself responsible for. So really it all comes back to the same thing.
Rooted as man's monadic essence is in the Boundless All, and furthermore in the highest and most spiritual aspects of the Boundless All, it is also seen at once that the universal karma of cosmic being is therefore the ultimate background of the karma of the individual, because the individual is inseparable from that universe. Indeed things are what they are because they compose a vast aggregate, indeed incomprehensible in its universal reaches, of co-operating energies and powers, of which every one is but an expression of karmic consequences. And this is but another manner of saying that everything that is, collectively and distributively, in general and in particular, is but the consequence or consequences of actions or movements which have preceded the present state of things; and, furthermore, that the present state of things will be succeeded by another web or network of incoming and interlocking energies and forces and beings which will be the resultants or consequences in every sense of the word, of what exists at present, both in the universal and in the particular.
We may speak of Karma as the 'fundamental law of the universe,' if we so choose, and there is no particular objection to this phrase, except perhaps in the one word 'law.' Karma is not a 'law' in the ordinary human sense of an enactment or rule of action laid down by some supreme law-giver. Not at all. It is, as the Ancients would have said, existent in the very 'nature of things.' Beings and things act or move, and by the very nature of things produce consequences, and so on indefinitely; for the original movement or act is but the consequence or result of some other consequence or result which preceded it, and so on in both directions endlessly: endlessly back into the past, and extending endlessly forward into what we call the future. This is the Chain of Causation we have referred to earlier.
Just as the root of universal nature, or of any individual entity or being or thing, is pure consciousness, pure abstract substance, so likewise is Karma in the last analysis but the fundamental activity of such consciousness itself, whether manifesting in the universal or in the particular, whether in a universe or in and through an individual entity. To say just what Karma is in other words, would be extremely difficult. It is because it is the profound mystery of the operation of the essential being of consciousness itself.
Nature proceeds in cycles, because Nature is founded in and on consciousness. And it is the characteristic of consciousness to know, and it is the characteristic operation of knowledge to repeat what it knows, and this repetitive action of indwelling consciousness produces through the boundless ranges of the Universe the cyclical action or the cyclical movements which are apparent all around us. It is these cyclical movements again which bring forth the various evolutionary activities, for indeed cyclical movement and evolution are so much the same thing that it would require a good deal of imagination to see any profound distinction between them once that the doctrine of Karma is clearly understood.
As we look around us and observe the operation of the wonderful spheres in the dark violet dome over our heads, and notice the vast fields of differentiation in the smaller and minor things which compose the entities living and dwelling in and on our earth, we are compelled to admit that it is just this vast number of interworking and co-operating agents of some deeply indwelling and over-ruling energy which perhaps attracts the thought and imagination of man more than anything else.
All men at some time must have asked themselves the question: Why is it that the universe is builded as it is, with such vast hosts of beings of all kinds and classes and in all degrees of advancement, and all apparently working towards some end, which, on the surface of things, seems beyond human understanding? We have already given the key for solving this apparent riddle, for it is only an apparent one. That key is what has just been pointed out: that all these hosts of differentiated entities and things are the consequences or results -- visible or invisible as the case may be -- of the operations or actions of evolving consciousnesses impelled to follow their various paths of action by the karmic heritage inherent in each one of them.
Size or lack of size has nothing to do with the matter. The Universe being nothing really but hierarchies of imbodied consciousnesses, each one with its own karmic load upon it -- or heritage, if the word be preferred -- of necessity that Universe is differentiated into all-various and bewildering multitudes of beings and things. And yet each one of these in its inmost of the inmost, is, as we have emphasized before, a Monad working in the surrounding milieu made by itself and by other similar Monads interlocking and interblending and interworking, and all evolving on their upward way.
Some are very far along the path, and we humans call these highly progressed ones, gods or cosmic spirits, or Dhyan-Chohans. Others are far in the rear of the vast hosts of evolving multitudes. And others, like us human beings, stand more or less at the middle point of this aggregate of developing consciousnesses.
If one were to say that Karma, whether in the large or in the small, whether universal or particular, is but the operation of the essential entities themselves -- in other words, of the Monads -- he would say truly. Really, that is just what Karma is. Whatever else it may be called, one thing is absolutely certain, and that is that Karma is nothing at all outside of, or superior to, or over-ruling the entity which manifests the Karma belonging to it, because native to it: flowing forth from its own heart of hearts, from the core of the core of the inmost of the inmost of itself. In other words, an entity's Karma is the self-expression of its individuality flowing forth in the form of evolutionary activity.
Universes, worlds, solar systems, nebulae, comets, planets, cosmic spirits, men, elementals, life-atoms, matter, and all the various planes and spheres of being, are not merely the resultants or consequences of each one's preceding and individual aggregate of karmic causes, but are each one for itself originating new karmic causes constantly and from itself alone.
The question has been asked: "If I understand your Theosophical teaching aright, Karma is but another name for your God. Is Karma therefore the supreme God?" It took some little time to explain to this inquirer the real nature of Karma, and it was not uninteresting to watch the effect that this explanation had upon his mind. An unbeliever himself in any kind of supreme divine power, he nevertheless, paradoxically enough, seemed disappointed that Karma was not an over-ruling god; and after the explanation, with some difficulty and labor of exegesis, had been laid before him, he said: "Why then, you don't believe in any god, you Theosophists; you are just sheer materialists!" Another explanation was needed, in order to show that, on the contrary, the Theosophist teaches that the Universe is full of gods in the higher ranges and reaches of the cosmos, but that each such god is what it is on account of the evolutionary path tending towards a constantly increasing perfection, which it had itself trodden in the past.
Furthermore, it required some time and pains to enable him to see that there was no end of the evolutionary process, and likewise no beginning; and that he was leaping from one absurd extreme to another, in saying that because Theosophists do not believe in the teachings of Theism, therefore they of necessity belong to the school of the materialists. It was necessary also to explain to him that the Theosophist most positively is not, in any sense of the word, a materialist; for matter, in the Theosophical conception, is but the aggregate of the multitudes of spiritual essences or Monads which are passing through a particular and definite phase of their evolutionary journey on this our own plane, which Monads, in this phase, are in a dormant or sleeping state, so to speak, and that this aggregate of dormant Monads produces what our senses perceive as, and what our mind calls, 'matter.'
Everything ultimately and fundamentally is consciousness,
or to speak more accurately, is numberless multitudes of consciousnesses or life-consciousness-centers, called Monads. Spirit and substance, or equivalently consciousness and vehicle, are fundamentally one.Theosophy, therefore, may be called an Objective Idealism, idealistic in principle, but not denying withal the relative objective reality of the so-called physical and other manifested worlds, which form what men popularly call matter or substance. And as this rule of things prevails over the entire Universe, and lasts throughout eternity: because as one or another Universe leaves the ranges of matter and re-becomes spirit, other Universes equivalently pass downwards in their evolutionary journey through what is called matter: it is therefore seen that both matter and spirit, in the last analysis, are only two phases or 'events' in the modern philosophical or Einsteinian sense.
All such 'events' or stages of growth are transitory and relatively unreal, and therefore are explained by that other branch of the Theosophical philosophy which deals with what is called maya, a Sanskrit word meaning 'illusion,' or the magical delusion worked by our imperfect human mentalities upon our understanding of Nature. In other words, things are not what they seem, for there is a Reality behind the seeming.
Maya or 'illusion' does not mean that things and entities, the Universe and all other cosmic aggregates, are unreal in the sense of non-existent per se; but it does mean that the perceiving and understanding entity, through its own innate imperfections, because its understanding is not yet sufficiently evolved readily and correctly to grasp the reality behind, misunderstands the essences of things, and through this functioning of the mind clothes those essences with illusory garments. This is the real meaning of maya.
Karma, therefore, is in no sense of the word Fatalism on the one hand, nor what is popularly known as 'Chance' on the other hand. It is essentially a course of action which the entity himself lays down for himself, and which his feet follow as a path of conduct. No one is responsible but himself for what he prepares for himself, and this, as said above, is Nature's fundamental law. There is great hope and comfort in this thought, for it means that "there is always another chance."
We are the makers and carvers of our own destiny, and are at the present time traversing the destiny, or undergoing it, which we in past times in other lives have carved out for ourselves. Both in character and body we reap what we sow, as the New Testament of the Christians puts it, and this expresses very graphically and briefly the essential meaning of the doctrine of Karma.
H.P. Blavatsky alludes to the matter in The Secret Doctrine (I, 642-44):
KARMA-NEMESIS is the creator of nations and mortals, but once created, it is they who make of her either a fury or a rewarding Angel. . . . . There is no return from the paths she cycles over; yet those paths are of our own making, for it is we, collectively or individually, who prepare them. Karma-Nemesis is the synonym of PROVIDENCE, minus design, goodness, and every other finite attribute and qualification, so unphilosophically attributed to the latter. An Occultist or a philosopher will not speak of the goodness or cruelty of Providence; but, identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will teach that nevertheless it guards the good and watches over them in this, as in future lives; and that it punishes the evil-doer -- aye, even to his seventh rebirth. So long, in short, as the effect of his having thrown into perturbation even the smallest atom in the Infinite World of harmony, has not been finally readjusted. For the only decree of Karma -- an eternal and immutable decree -- is absolute Harmony in the world of matter as it is in the world of Spirit. It is not, therefore, Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we, who reward or punish ourselves according to whether we work with, through and along with nature, abiding by the laws on which that Harmony depends, or -- break them.
Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable were men to work in union and harmony, instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of those ways -- which one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark and intricate; while another sees in them the action of blind Fatalism; and a third, simple chance, with neither gods nor devils to guide them -- would surely disappear, if we would but attribute all these to their correct cause. With right knowledge, or at any rate with a confident conviction that our neighbors will no more work to hurt us than we would think of harming them, the two-thirds of the World's evil would vanish into thin air. Were no man to hurt his brother, Karma-Nemesis would have neither cause to work for, nor weapons to act through. It is the constant presence in our midst of every element of strife and opposition, and the division of races, nations, tribes, societies and individuals into Cains and Abels, wolves and lambs, that is the chief cause of the 'ways of Providence.' We cut these numerous windings in our destinies daily with our own hands, while we imagine that we are pursuing a track on the royal high road of respectability and duty, and then complain of those ways being so intricate and so dark. We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making, and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring us. But verily there is not an accident in our lives, not a misshapen day, or a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another life. If one breaks the laws of Harmony, or, as a theosophical writer expresses it, "the laws of life," one must be prepared to fall into the chaos one has oneself produced. . . .
. . . Karma-Nemesis is no more than the (spiritual) dynamical effect of causes produced and forces awakened into activity by our own actions.
There is no religion, no philosophy worthy of the name, which does not contain this doctrine of Karma under one or another formulation, for the doctrine arises out of the very essence of any man's sense of justice, of retributive justice; and such action of retributive natural justice is but Nature's way of bringing about the rearrangement of natural harmony disturbed by the thoughts and acts, emotions and feelings, aspirations and desires of some or of all living entities.
In our chapters on Evolution we have spoken of the various entities and things which infill or compose Universal Being, as 'events'. And so indeed they are. They are all 'events,' because they are all transitory, temporary. Not one of them, no matter how great in evolutionary advancement, no matter what its magnitude in size, and no matter where we may class it in the frontierless range of Universal Being, is absolute -- all are transitory, and each one of them, therefore, is also a passing phase or event of the cosmic life.
There is nothing which is not transitory, nothing which is utterly permanent, changeless and living forever. How could that be? How can anything reach an ultimate beyond which there is no further possibility of growth and progress? For growth and progress mean change. How can such a thing as the 'changeless' exist? Such a conception would mean that the changeless, did it exist, could have had no past, and can have no future, for there would be no growth and progress in it, nothing but changeless immobility; and such a conception is as repulsive to our intuitions as it is repugnant to our reflective minds.
Some things are relatively more changing than others, but this is only to be expected. Things which live their life in wide and long cycles of time, appear to us men who live in a smaller and more restricted period of existence, to be more or less changeless, but this view arises out of the imperfection of our knowledge of things. Everything is changing because growing; there is nothing changeless, says our majestic philosophy, in the Boundless All, for that would be equivalent to utter, eternal immobility. Life, movement, progress, evolution, are everywhere, and the most thoughtless of men must see in this conception how wide are the fields of hope which Theosophy presents to our mind's eye. Always advance, always progress, always upwards during illimitable duration.
So far as men are concerned, or entities who occupy in other spheres of the celestial spaces a status of being equivalent to that of humanity on this earth, what we Theosophists speak of as Reincarnation is the method by which karma works in and through us humans, because it is we ourselves who produce karma eventuating in reimbodiment in bodies of flesh or their equivalent.
We act, and Nature reacts, and this reaction against our initiating movement, takes the form, in the present period of human evolution, of reincarnation. Reincarnation itself is a special instance of a more general natural process, which we call Reimbodiment.
Indeed, from one point of view it would be quite proper to say that the doctrine of Karma is but another way of expressing the multiform and all-various activities of existence -- of the Universal Life: for the action of Karma is universal. Nor can we call Karma either conscious or unconscious. It is neither good nor bad, never had a beginning, never will have an end. Its action in a sense is purely automatic, for, reduced to final principles, it is but the indirect functioning of the consciousness in the core of the core of every being.
The Secret Doctrine
(II, 304-6) refers to Karma-Nemesis again in the following very graphic words.. . . Karma-Nemesis, or the Law of Retribution. This Law -- whether Conscious or Unconscious -- predestines nothing and no one. It exists from and in Eternity, truly, for it is ETERNITY itself; and as such, since no act can be co-equal with eternity, it cannot be said to act, for it is ACTION itself. It is not the Wave which drowns a man, but the personal action of the wretch, who goes deliberately and places himself under the impersonal action of the laws that govern the Ocean's motion. Karma creates nothing, nor does it design. It is man who plans and creates causes, and Karmic law adjusts the effects; which adjustment is not an act, but universal harmony, tending ever to resume its original position, like a bough, which, bent down too forcibly, rebounds with corresponding vigor. If it happen to dislocate the arm that tried to bend it out of its natural position, shall we say that it is the bough which broke our arm, or that our own folly has brought us to grief? Karma . . . has not involved its decrees in darkness purposely to perplex man; nor shall it punish him who dares to scrutinize its mysteries. On the contrary, he who unveils through study and meditation its intricate paths, and throws light on those dark ways, in the windings of which so many men perish owing to their ignorance of the labyrinth of life, is working for the good of his fellow-men. KARMA is an Absolute and Eternal law in the World of manifestation; and . . . believers in Karma cannot be regarded as Atheists or materialists -- still less as fatalists: for Karma is one with the Unknowable, of which it is an aspect in its effects in the phenomenal world.
Intimately, or rather indissolubly, connected with Karma, then, is the law of rebirth, or of the re-incarnation of the same spiritual individuality in a long, almost interminable, series of personalities. The latter are like the various costumes and characters played by the same actor, with each of which that actor identifies himself and is identified by the public, for the space of a few hours. The inner, or real man, who personates those characters, knows the whole time that he is Hamlet for the brief space of a few acts, which represent, however, on the plane of human illusion the whole life of Hamlet. And he knows that he was, the night before, King Lear, the transformation in his turn of the Othello of a still earlier preceding night; but the outer, visible character is supposed to be ignorant of the fact. In actual life that ignorance is, unfortunately, but too real. Nevertheless, the permanent individuality is fully aware of the fact, though, through the atrophy of the 'spiritual' eye in the physical body, that knowledge is unable to impress itself on the consciousness of the false personality.
Karma has sometimes been called the 'law of ethical causation,' and in one aspect it can indeed be so called. But such a phrase deals with only one part of the operations of Nature and omits mention of the universal sway or sweep of karmic activity. Karma 'rules' the so-called 'inanimate' world fully as much as it does the hearts and minds of men, and of course when we say 'rules' we employ popular phraseology. Strictly, Karma no more 'rules' or 'governs' or 'directs' than does the automatic action of the ocean the ebb and flow of the tides, for Karma is not an originating power exterior to the acting entity or thing. So far as individuals are concerned, it is the indwelling consciousness of the acting entity which originates and sets in motion the operation of Karma.
It is most important, however, not to conclude that karmic action is a mere automatic resultant of inner and lifeless matter, for in the Theosophical philosophy nothing is lifeless, but everything has a life of its own type and kind. The 'automatic action' of Karma here spoken of has a different meaning from what the words might seem to imply to one whose mentality is still more or less under the cloud of the old-fashioned materialism.
Nature is harmonious throughout. Its heart is harmony itself; and an action by an entity in the hosts of animate beings which make Nature, is subject to the reaction of the surrounding weight of the Universe upon it, moving to restore the equilibrium disturbed by such action. And this combination of the action of an originating consciousness and a reaction upon it is Karma.
Karma, therefore, in another sense is Readjustment, the re-establishing of the natural harmony of Nature, which the action done, or left undone when it should have been done, has thrown into local and temporary disturbance. Thus, therefore, we repeat, there is nothing fatalistic about the doctrine of Karma. It is action originating in the free will and consciousness of some entity which induces the reaction of Nature. This combination we call Karma.
There is one very important point about this subject which perhaps is clear enough in the outline of the Theosophical philosophy already made, but which it may be advantageous to speak of again here. It is this: the heart of Nature or the essence of Nature, because it is Harmony, is what the ancient Greek philosophers would have called Love. As H. P. Blavatsky so beautifully puts it in her The Voice of the Silence, Compassion is Nature's fundamental law. The importance of this observation rests in the following: it is the bounden duty of every human being to help Nature and to work with her. As H. P. Blavatsky also says in the same treatise:
Help Nature and work on with her; and Nature will regard thee as one of her creators and make obeisance.
Gentleness, kindness, pity, compassion, love, mercy, in fact all the fine and ennobling attributes of the fully developed human being, belong distinctly in their action to this line of co-operation with Nature's fundamental essence and being. The man who would stand idly by when another is in trouble, listening with stony-hearted indifference to the cries of misery or of pain without stirring to relieve the distress, is acting directly contrary to Nature's fundamental law. He is taking upon himself a heavy burden of karmic responsibility, which Nature in its reestablishment of harmony will visit upon him to the uttermost.
It is futile and an entire distortion of the sense of the doctrine of Karma, to think that because some human being is undergoing disaster or is in a situation of distress and suffering, therefore he should be left unhelped and uncomforted on the sole supposition that he is 'merely working out his karmic deserts.' This idea is monstrous and runs directly counter to all the teachings of all the great Seers and Sages of all the ages. The Voice of the Silence, one of the most beautiful devotional works of any time, puts it clearly:
Inaction in a deed of mercy becomes an action in a deadly sin.
The Buddha, the Christ, and such other Great Ones have left behind them in no uncertain words the doctrine of our ethical responsibility to others, calling upon us to be up and doing in our duty towards others. Outside of other considerations, one must be exceedingly dense of understanding not to realize that there is no developing power in life which is so certain and so quick as self-forgetful action in compassionate service to others. Such service teaches us how speedily to find the resources of our own hearts and to see the wondrous mysteries lying therein. It also teaches us how most quickly and surely to develop the finer parts of our intellectual faculty. Benevolence combined with beneficent action in service to others, may truly be described as the royal road of discipleship, and indeed only a strong-hearted man or woman can follow this path consistently, and with tact.
It is easy enough to go through life involved in one's own personal and purely selfish affairs; but the effects or consequences of such a course of living are bitter in the extreme, and turn to the ashes of death in the mouth. Such a course of life shrivels the character and demeans it, simply because the sphere of action is so restricted and localized, whereas benevolence eventuating in beneficent action, is the quickest cure for all the pettiness of mind and heart to which we are so sensitively alive when we see them in the characters of those who surround us.
There is one more point regarding the doctrine of Karma: the student of ancient literatures, particularly those of the Orient, has doubtless met with observations to the effect that when a man has reached the status or condition of Mastership of life -- in other words, has become one of the great Sages and Seers, or indeed, perhaps has reached a still more lofty stature in spirituality -- he is then 'above Karma,' above karmic action, and has passed beyond its sway. But we should always remember that Karma is not only universal but has neither beginning nor end, and that the highest god in highest heaven is as much subject to Karma as is the humblest ant climbing up a sand-hill, only to go tumbling down again.
Is there a contradiction in these two statements? There is not, although there may be a paradox. The following is the explanation of the apparent contradiction. A man or an entity, whatever its high state of evolutionary development may be, passes beyond the sway or sweep of the karmic action of the hierarchy to which he belongs when he has become at-one with the loftiest part or portion of such a hierarchy. For the time being, he has reached quasi-divinity, and as all the movements of his nature are then entirely harmonious with the hierarchy in which he now stands at the summit thereof, it is obvious that being one with the nature of that hierarchy and 'working with Nature' in this respect, he is beyond the sway or 'rule' or 'control' of the general field of karmic action in that hierarchy. That hierarchical karma has no further sway over him, for he is therein a Master of Life.
But in the universal sense, and because hierarchies in the Boundless All are numberless, the hierarchy in which he now finds himself a Master of Life is but one of hosts of other hierarchies, some of them far lower, and others far higher. As compared with the Boundless All, his own hierarchy shrinks to the dimensions of a mere mathematical point, so to say, and becomes simply an aggregate hierarchical Atom in the fields of universal life. This means that as the evolution of such an entity progresses, he enters into still larger and sublimer spheres of action, wherein, at his entrance, he finds himself on the lowest rung of that new Ladder of Life, and immediately falls under the sway or 'rule' or 'governance' of the Karma of this sublimer hierarchical sphere.
We must never forget that man is a composite entity. He has both heart and mind, and a due and proper understanding of Nature and of Nature's laws and operations can be obtained only by an employment of all man's faculties, omitting none. An over-accentuation of the human mentality is bound to lead the student astray, just as much as an over-accentuation in thought or action of his emotional parts is bound likewise to lead him astray.
But when heart and mind work together, and man realizes that they are but two aspects of the one indwelling consciousness, the Inner God, then ensues a harmonious development of all man's parts, and the true realization of what life means. One of H. P. Blavatsky's greatest achievements, we believe, in this connection, was that she pointed out so clearly and proved so forcibly the natural truth that man's spiritual development depends first upon a harmonious adjustment of both mind and heart, and their final unification in the consciousness of the real existence of the continuous inspiration of the essential Divinity within.